


From Tuscany, With Love

by Dreadful Weather Today (TearoomSaloon)



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Declarations Of Love, Eventual Fluff, F/M, Post Finale, Ripper Alana
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-08
Updated: 2014-06-08
Packaged: 2018-02-03 20:07:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1755923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TearoomSaloon/pseuds/Dreadful%20Weather%20Today
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In that moment, he hated her. He hated her and everything she was. This violent, powerful, intelligent woman, this broken woman, this woman who couldn't stop killing. He hated that she was the Ripper all along and he never noticed.<br/>Most of all, though, he hated himself. He hated himself for trusting her.<br/>For loving her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	From Tuscany, With Love

**Author's Note:**

> I was prompted to write something to Leonard Cohen's Suzanne, so I switched up universes and made it hurt less because this is shameless self indulgence.
> 
> Also weird note, my reversal au sort of takes personalities and swaps them around as well.

The lights were thick and beautiful over the boardwalk, humming orange and gold in the deepness of the night. Port and starboard lights glowed lightly on the barges passing by, flickering red and green under the honey moon. Her hair blew gently in the breeze, her eyes fixed ahead into the midnight blue expanse before them, horizon bleeding straight into the water.

"I don't expect you to understand what's coming," she said quietly, not meeting his eyes.

"I don't understand the now." He couldn't look at her. He could barely stand the scent of her on the ocean breeze, tangled fruits mingling in the salty air. 

In that moment, he hated her. He hated her and everything she was. This violent, powerful, intelligent woman, this broken woman, this woman who couldn't stop killing. Most of all, though, he hated himself.

"They're going to come for you." She was unreasonably calm. "They will come for me, and then they'll come for you. You have to run, Hannibal, if you want to leave this behind. You can't get caught."

"Won't you get caught?"

Her laugh was small but unsettling; a sound he rarely heard. "They'll never catch me; I'm smoke between their fingers. I'll always be faster."

The air was still between them and the silence gathered like moths to sunlight. He didn't say another word to her, was too disgusted to speak more than necessary.

But she smiled forlornly at him just once, and he let her squeeze his hand with her parting words. "I understand if you want to forget all of this, to stay blind and bury it in the backyard, but I'd appreciate if you chose to remember me how we first met. Not like how you see me now, not how you think I am."

He looked down at her as she continued, her face softer than he'd ever seen, her features natural and somber. "I never lied except by omission. I meant everything I said to you. And if you ask it of me, I will say it again."

He remained stoic, not moving as she tipped up to kiss his cheek, not watching as she disappeared into the starlessness.

He threw out anything blue in his wardrobe the next day. He tossed the one paisley tie and the tartan pocket squares. He didn't want to see her patterns on his person, he didn't want to see her patterns in his house. He sat at the foot of his bed, staring at the boxes of things that smelled like her. The boxes of things that reminded him of her. His best dinner jacket still carried the scent of champagne and roast duck and berry syrup; the last formal meal they'd shared. Cat hair stuck to so many pairs of socks.

He shoved it all away into closets and spaces, putting the attic to use. He packed everything touched by her into neat plastic containers and banished it all to the unseen corners of his house. 

He kept the starfish cufflinks, the ones she'd given to him for Christmas so many years ago. He rolled them over in his palms, the white gold sparkling in the firelight. He couldn't bring himself to remove every bit of her, and if he were going to keep her memory around, it should be this incarnation: the beautiful young woman with the surgeon's hands and the teacher's smile. The one who stopped him in the snow to push a box into his empty hands and vanish before he could feel guilty. The kind woman. The wonderful Dr. Bloom.

He kept trying to convince himself that she was the woman he fell in love with all those years ago, and that the new one—the  _true_  one—held none of his affection. But they kept melding together, and he couldn't stop seeing both halves in each other.

He didn't confront her when he knew she was leaving. He didn't venture out in the pouring rain to put himself or anyone else in danger. But he heard what she'd done to Will, to Jack, to Abigail. He imagined how she did it—how cold she'd been, how warm. How forced she felt. But he didn't sympathize, and he didn't forgive her. She was a devil merely concealing her horns, covering her hooves in stilettos, wearing her wings like a dress.

Months later, he went after her. Emotions twisted, heart stained, he left no proof of his existence. He was going to disappear at the end of this, either into the river or on a plate, he'd never touch American soil again.

He found her on a beach in Tuscany.

Weeks and weeks of trekking through France, months and months of running through Spain, and he found her by accident in Italy.  Her hair was a different color and she wouldn't have been caught dead in that hat, but it was her, the same dog-eared book of poetry in her hands.

"You seem surprised," she said in French as he approached her. "Are you surprised to see me  _here_  or are you surprised to see  _me?_ "

"Both."

"Well, here I am. You've been looking for me for more than half a year, haven't you?"

"Yes."

"Come, let me see you, Hannibal. Sit. Standing behind me is terribly rude."

He slid into the beach chair next to her, watching her carefully. She smiled at him, charmed by his fearful mannerisms.

"I'm not going to harm you. I don't wait this long to kill."

"What if I were going to kill you?"

Her laugh was melodic this time, somehow not jarring to his nerves. "You're not a murderer, Hannibal. You haven't come all this way to slit my throat and go home. You've come for nostalgia."

He frowned. "I don't understand."

"You miss me. Not this me, but the me you thought I was. The woman I crafted for you. She was for you alone, if you'd believe that. And I'd wanted to become her and throw the woman you see before you to the water to rot. But I'd gotten in too deep. Too much of me is what I am now. Such a shame. We were beautiful lovers, Hannibal."

"You were my best lover."

She smiled painfully, turning her face to sea. "I tried very hard to be. I tried very hard to be the best to you, for you. I tried very hard to love you."

His voice was a barely a whisper. "Did you?"

"I did. I  _do_. More than anything else in this life, I do. It's an incurable weakness, caring for another."

"It never stops aching, does it?"

"Never." She looked upon his face, her eyes deep wells of crimson and ember. "You've put a hole in this heart I grew for you. The ocean flooded my chest and I'm always drowning."

He reached out for her hand, weaving his fingers into hers. "I've been sleeping on the seabed since you left me on the boardwalk."

"Do you understand now?"

"No."

She took a deep breath, rubbing her thumb over the back of his palm. "You needed to come to terms with what I am opposed to what I was. You needed to figure out if your love was unconditional or there were clauses in hidden pockets. And I will assume the former, since you're sitting beside me in Italy with my hand in yours—a gesture you initiated. Am I correct?"

"You are."

"I want you to come with me, now that you know the truth of my nature. I want you to sleep in my bed and rise with me in the morning. I want you to have me as I will have you—wholly, unconditionally, unyieldingly. You need only trust me."

He swallowed. "I do."

She leaned in to kiss him, her lips as soft and as sweet as his memory recalled. Her tenderness hit him like a wall, and he realized how much he'd missed her, regardless of what she was.

"I never thought I'd kiss you again," she said against his lips with a hum.

"Nor I you, but now I fear I won't stop."

He'd never seen her smile so widely. "So don't."


End file.
